Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 455

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

…Like a fresco wall painting, it can be destroyed but
never taken away.
– Leibniz
(Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, 1646~1716)
Children of Rune
Demonic
Episode 225.
Playing Oneself (1)
Act 13. Sunburn
1. The Sleeping Jewel
Once upon a time, there was a girl who believed in promises. In the year she turned eighteen, she betrayed the faith of those around her and crossed the sea. She abandoned the duties erased from her childhood, forgot her homeland, and spent her years with her ears closed to all calls. One morning, the girl heard an ordinary story—as mundane as the hard, round bread she ate each morning with wildflower tea. It was something she thought happened only to others. After that morning, everything ended.
The moment Joshua’s name fell from his lips, the red hair rose as if alive. It stretched like rapidly growing vines. It spread like a fan. The ends became countless branches. Crimson leaves held fire within them. The autumn leaves burned so fiercely they ignited of their own accord.
But it was brief. The hair that had flared up like flames soon crumbled into ash and scattered. It withered like dead branches and faded as the embers died. The leaves twisted black and fell.
Now, stripped of its fire, the hair hung hideously around her waist like a charred curtain. Anarose’s eyes were wide open, as if trying to comprehend the meaning of this transformation.
When their eyes met, Joshua’s lips trembled slightly, opening and closing. No sound emerged, but Anarose understood.
“You’re right. It was your doing.”
Joshua shook his head. He was about to ask instead. Before he could, Anarose spoke.
“Why? I don’t know either.”
“I don’t possess such power.”
“That’s not an answer. It happened.”
“Why are you so certain it was because of me?”
“Because change doesn’t occur in this place.”
Her words seemed plain at first, and it took a moment to grasp their true meaning. Maximian was the first to question it.
“Change doesn’t occur? No change at all? Even as time passes?”
“Look at my face.”
No one knew whose eyes met whose. Both thought the woman was looking at them. A forest reflected in her pupils. The forest was still.
“For centuries unchanged—the face of a witch who neither ages nor dies.”
With those words, everything around them seemed to freeze. All was still within her eyes. Her pupils were green fossils. The forest and its paths were patterns within the stone.
“You truly are….”
Maximian began to speak but stopped. Then the vine-like thing that had constricted his chest rustled. Startled, the vine slowly lowered both of them to the ground and retreated into the forest.
Maximian turned to look back. Only a picturesque forest remained. The vine had vanished into the undergrowth like a snake into brush. He furrowed his brow and breathed several times before looking at Joshua.
“Did you suspect? Who you would meet in this place?”
“No.”
Joshua shook his head, doing so for a long time as if trying to awaken his mind.
“Like you, I didn’t know. I couldn’t have known. Not until we came here…. But the moment we faced each other, I knew. It’s impossible, yet I was certain. I don’t even know why.”
Maximian closed his eyes tightly, then threw his head back and shook it violently before speaking.
“I really wish I could ask you and that person to prove it to me. So I can believe too.”
Joshua couldn’t answer and looked at Anarose. Between their locked gazes, ash like burnt flowers descended.
It became very quiet.
“I don’t remember who you are.”
It was only natural. They had never met.
“Yet I know you. From beyond memory. The me that exists outside memory knows you as I know letters carved upon my brow. Who are you?”
Joshua swallowed his answer and lowered his head. He could not dare speak aloud the name of the person who connected Anarose and himself. Centuries had passed, yet it was impossible to gauge what Anarose felt. If her hatred burned as fiercely as when she refused to show her face to Icabon at death’s door?
“You called my name.”
It was an undeniable truth. Joshua closed his eyes tightly, then opened them, but her gaze remained fixed upon him—colorless and unwavering.
“I know you have no power. In its place, your existence must be bound to mine. Yet you and I do not know each other. Then someone must exist between us. You would know who that is.”
Maximian too was uneasy about how this conversation would unfold. So he attempted to defuse the situation however he could.
“Wait, I’m confused—so the current situation is that you’re really the one with long hair… or, well, you don’t have long hair anymore? Anyway…”
“Yes.”
Anarose grasped the ends of her own hair with her hand. A handful of ash crumbled and fell away.
“No longer long hair. Only Anarose. Only that name. Because you came. By merely entering this place of unchanging stillness, by merely meeting me, by merely speaking my name, you transform me and erase my name from within the tomb. I cast the hair that time had woven into fire, and only I remain. Only I. The memories burn away, and only I remain. Only I.”
From afar came the sound of pages turning. The wind had not yet reached this place. Nine, ten…
Anarose’s hair rose once more into the air. Yet unlike the flames that had burned as if under a spell moments before, her hair—barely past her shoulders now—drifted lifelessly, scattering the ash that had gathered at its ends. It had only floated for a moment. Then, like dead insects, it fell.
Joshua spoke.
“You are the one I should have mourned.”
Words that Aurelia had spoken. They flowed like wind, like birds, whispered thus. Had they been upon a stage, it would have been enchanting—but this was different. His own reason, no longer that of an audience, seemed to fold inward and grow thin.
“You who are dead yet not dead.”
Anarose lifted her chin lifelessly. As a dead person’s throat might move. Her eyes, slowly raised, groped at the heavens. Stars climbed the vault of the celestial sphere, climbing and climbing until at last they fell and fell and…
“I am Joshua von Arnim.”
The lips that spoke seemed not to be his own. The spirit of one who had never reached this place even unto death seemed to have been draped upon him in this place where no ghost dwelt. It took time before Joshua could meet Anarose’s eyes again. In that interval, Maximian turned to look at Joshua and tried to signal with his eyes, but it did not reach him. Had he been able, he would have covered Joshua’s mouth, but he could not.
“People call me by a nickname the same as that of the first ancestor.”
Anarose stared at Joshua with her chin slightly lowered. Maximian watched her so intently that blood vessels stood out in his eyes. He tried to read any sign in her expression, but felt nothing. Having lived so long, she seemed to have forgotten how to reveal emotion upon her face.
Yet in the next moment her hand moved toward her chest, and Maximian reflexively pushed Joshua to the side. Anarose’s and Maximian’s eyes met.
“…”
Anarose’s hand merely grasped her own throat. It was a pallid neck where even the veins were scarcely discernible.
“It’s all right.”
Joshua, who had stumbled and steadied himself, grasped Maximian’s arm and then released it. Maximian muttered under his breath.
“You don’t understand that whether it’s all right or not isn’t up to you.”
“When I say it’s all right, I mean it’s all right no matter what happens.”
“Even if she turned you and me into two charred beans not worth eating?”
Instead of shaking his head, Joshua walked toward Anarose. He extended his hand toward her, who stood as if leaning upon the air itself, slanted and precarious. He grasped both her arms. Then, wrapping one arm around her back, he drew her gently close. She leaned into his arms with such ease.
Ah, was this what should have happened to them long ago?
Anarose said nothing. Not even when Joshua set her down upon the grassland, nor when his hand finally released her. Joshua too sat upon the earth. Their knees were close enough to touch.
Joshua spoke.
“What did you think about during all those long years you have lived?”
“I slept.”
Time flowed only within dreams, she continued, her voice seeming to struggle as it emerged from her grasped throat.
“Did you not feel the passage of time?”
“Decades can pass in a single night’s dream.”
“Were there no moments when you were awake?”
Though she didn’t want to, Anarose slowly withdrew her hand from her neck as I spoke. Red marks were imprinted there, as if she’d been strangling herself.
“That force awakens me, and I have no choice in the matter.”
“That force?”
“The entity I sealed away, struggling to break free—that force is what awakens me. I fight against it and bury it deep beneath the earth. Afterward, I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep, and centuries pass like a dream. But even within that dream, I must keep my eyes open and guard this prison. There is no rest for me. Not for a single moment. My body and mind are devoted entirely to fighting against it.”
Joshua didn’t ask what Anarose’s cryptic words meant. He simply opened his eyes wide, as if trying to feel the weight of her situation. Then Anarose, her chin held high, gazed not at Joshua or Maximian, but at something deep within the Forest.
“All that remains for me is that alone. Nothing else is left. If my long hair was memory, then today it too has been lost with it. This place is a tomb, and I am buried here. No one can unearth me. Not even you. No matter who you are.”
They had arrived far too late to have any right to disturb Anarose’s endless sleep, her endless battle. No one else had that right either. It was a shackle she had chosen herself. Bound by that shackle, she had lived through the ages on behalf of countless others. As Grandmother Weatheren had said, because the witch had kept watch, Sunset Island had been granted one final chance. The chance to lose magic and begin anew.
They had come only after centuries had passed. They had no right to speak of unfairness, no right to tell her to stop, no right to interfere. Perhaps they didn’t even have the right to ask. What right did they have to unearth memories that might be as indelible as the handprints slowly fading from her neck?
Anarose’s centuries had flowed in a way different from other people’s. To her, memories of Icabon might feel like something from only a few years ago. If that were the case, then her unwillingness to speak with Icabon’s descendant and his story might actually be a blessing. Even if they could not ask a single word about what they were searching for.
Yet the two of them did not reach the same understanding.
“Of course, we have no such right.”
Maximian interjected abruptly, and instead of approaching the two, he folded his arms and dropped to the ground where he stood.
“But if we accept that, there’s something curious about it.”
Anarose turned her gaze toward him—a gaze that had been wandering through the Garden as if she’d only just noticed Maximian’s presence.
“You were awake.”
Children of Rune – Winterer
Author: Jeon Min-hee
Publisher: 14 Months Publishing
The copyright to this book belongs to the author and 14 Months Publishing.
To reuse all or part of this book’s content, written consent from both parties is required.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————